Fort Morgan man tells story of hanging on for life in bed of carjacked pickup at 100+ mph
Scott Copass is OK now, but his ride last Monday was a nightmare. Hanging on for dear life in the back of his carjacked pickup, he hung on as deputies chased the vehicle for over 30 minutes and at speeds of 108 mph before using stop sticks to blow out a tire and arrest the carjacker.
"Somebody was watching over me that day. He brought me home safe to my family," said Copass.
Copass was arriving at his maintenance job early Monday morning July 24 at the Recreation Fieldhouse when a man approached from across the parking lot. It was 37-year-old Juan Barreneche, just released from jail a couple of hours earlier about 4 a.m.
"He comes up to me and he goes, 'You're giving me a ride.' I was like, 'No I'm not.' And he goes, 'Gimmie your truck.' 'No, I'm not," said Copass.
Barreneche thought someone was after him, Copass said. When Copass suggested they go inside and call the police, Barreneche grabbed him by the collar and threw him down, leading to a scuffle in the parking lot. Barrenche was able to grab the keys to Copass' Dodge pickup and climb into the driver's seat. Copass scrambled into the back, although doesn't remember doing it.
"I kept thinking, this is happening to me? Out here" said Copass, disbelieving it could happen in Fort Morgan.
The pickup headed east on Highway 34. Heading in the other direction was Morgan County Sheriff David Martin, who seeing the truck speeding, turned around and went after it. Soon calls were going out about a carjacking as Copass reached a dispatcher. Other law officers joined the pursuit, with Copass in the back of the 2009 Dodge clinging with one hand to the load lock bar across the middle of the bed of the truck.
"I figured, well, if he slows down enough going through one of the small towns I would jump out. But he never slowed down," said Copass.
In fact, he seemed to speed up as more law officers came after them. Barreneche sped through Brush without slowing and headed toward Akron. He managed to get around one set of stop sticks. Speeds reached well over 100 mph with Copass still hunkered down in the back of his own pickup.
"I remember one time I'm telling dispatch it's like, this could go real badly," he said. A crash at that speed could well mean rolling the truck, he thought.
Barreneche, who is from Florida, had been arrested by Fort Morgan police officers the evening before. He had been the subject of a disturbance call at a local motel. The police talked to him and asked him to leave. Later they were called back and arrested him for 2nd-degree trespassing. The charge is a misdemeanor and under current Colorado law, means he was eligible to bond out on a personal recognizance bond, which he did by posting a $1,000 bond the following morning at 4 a.m.
"Trespassing by itself seems like a minor offense. But it doesn't take into account the underlying issues that caused him to trespass," said Fort Morgan Police Chief Loren Sharp.
Sharp was bothered by Barreneche's ability to bond out amid concerns about public safety.
"I think we need to find a balance of the consequence for the person to make sure that they're stable and safe in jail and they're capable of being successful outside of jail while also finding that community safety balance. And not letting them back out to the community where the community's at risk," said Sharp.
"I could see his eyeballs in the rearview mirror," said Copass about his ride. "It's all I could do was just hold on and try to keep dispatch informed the best I could and she kept trying to talk to me. I couldn't hear anything in the back of the truck."
But a lot went through his mind.
"He could have come across a mom with kids in the car. I did not want that to happen. Because I've got eight grandkids of my own."
Finally between Otis and Yuma, more than 35 minutes after the pursuit started, law officers were successful with stop sticks. The truck's front driver's side tire blew, Barreneche drove into a farm with deputies and police right behind. Copass was lying low.
"Three arms come in the back of the truck, yank me out of the back of the truck, throw me on the ground, tell me to get back," he recalled. "Guns drawn on my truck and all I'm thinking is, 'please don't shoot my truck, please don't shoot my truck.'"
They didn't. Barreneche was taken into custody. Copass was uninjured in spite of the wild ride.
Later it was quite a phone call to his wife Melinda, "I told her what happened and she just starts balling. She goes, 'I could have lost you.' 'Yeah you could have Dear, but you didn't and a bad guy is sitting in jail now.'"
Barreneche now faces six additional charges: robbery, aggravated motor vehicle theft, reckless endangerment, reckless driving, criminal trespass, and third-degree assault. For a time after his second arrest, the jail had him on suicide watch out of concern for his own safety.
